Letterbox 4:3 to 16:9 widescreen - ifoedit easiest way to do it?

[yoda313]

So I now finally have an hdtv so all of my widescreen dvds look fantastic on my upconverting dvd player. However I have several dvds (for example the first release editions of Star Trek Generations, Insurrection and First Contact). They have the full widescreen picture however they are fixed in a full 4:3 frame. The picture really looks disappointing. I do have newer releases of other Trek films that look terrific in native 16:9 mode.

What I'd like to be able to do is take these letterboxed dvds and reproduce them in 16:9 in the fewest steps. Now these re-released 16:9 movies are like 10$ these days so in the end I can rebuy them or wait for the hddvd releases. But if I could just take a few hours in processing to jazz them up I'd like to.

I remember that ifoedit has a 16:9 flag option. I tried once before however I never had a true way to test the results as I never did have a widescreen monitor or tv until now (just the tv still use square monitors).

I was doing some browsing and found satstorms guide for converting broadcasts to 16:9. However I need to convert the vob structure to 16:9 for reburning. I'd prefer a simple solution. If this is going to take hours of processing time I may forgo the procedure and wait for the hddvd releases.

Is this a worthwhile process for some movies? I'd also like to do this to my unedited Star Wars dvds that I bought when they released the dvd packs the other year. Please let me know. (yes I did find some threads but nothing recent). By the way my fastest pc is a amd 64bit single core 3800 2.4ghz pc running vista premium.

[aedipuss]

the 4:3 video was pan&scanned from the film widescreen which means the sides were edited off and are gone. you can't put them back by changing the flag to 16/9. all that would do is stretch the video and make everything short and fat onscreen.

[yoda313]

Thank you aedipuss but this is actually WIDESCREEN LETTERBOX. The movie has the giant horizontal black bars not the pillar bars. This is the full image just not with the 16:9 enhancement.

[edDV]

Some HDTV sets and some DVD players offer a zoom feature to match 4:3 letterbox to 16:9 full width. That is an important feature to seek in a TV.

The zoom ratio would be

1366/854 = 1.6x for a 1366x768 display
or
1920/854 = 2.25x for a 1920x1080 display

Unfortunately those zoom amounts require interpolation.

PAL numbers would be 1.333x and 1.875x

[manono]

Yeah, all you can do is to zoom them, and they'll look like crap when you do, because widescreen 4:3 DVDs just don't have the resolution to look at all decent on a good widescreen TV set. Changing the video stream attributes from 4:3 to 16:9 using IFOEdit or PGCEdit won't do anything but stretch the picture - give it bad AR. You can reencode them, but they won't look much different than what the zoom on the remote control will do for you. If you really like them, you'll have to buy new 16:9 DVDs.

[Megahurts]

Most upscaling players will ignore the A/R flag and upscale a 4:3 widescreen leltterbox movie as 16:9. To get the proper aspect ratio, switch the player to 480P. You will have a smaller pix with black bars all around.

Now if your TV has a ZOOM feature, it may be enough to eliminate the bars.

[manono]

Maybe most defective upscaling DVD players will stretch it from right to left with bad AR. Mine sticks it in the middle of the screen with added black pillarbars on the right and left, and the embedded black bars above and below the picture. It plays with the proper AR. That's at 720p.

[yoda313]

Thanks everyone. I'll try fooling around with the remote. As far as I can tell it only has even increments in the zoom settings. Maybe in the manual it will tell me differently.

I'll also try the 480p on the upscaling dvd player. That said anytime it is on 480p it doesn't fill the entire screen. Perhaps that might actually be better preserving the picture instead of stretching it unnaturally width wise.

Thanks again.

[aedipuss]

sorry about that , what you have is 16x9 encoded as 4:3.

you might be able to trick your player with the ifo edit trick. make a movie only copy with dvdshrink then open the video_ts ifo and then the vob ifo with ifoedit and in the bottom pane change the video attributes to 16x9 and letterboxed or automatic letterboxed. make sure to save and overwrite the old ifos. one or the other may do it.

[yoda313]

thanks aedipuss.

I tried some of the suggestions above. When I did it in 480p it was in the center of the screen with both pillar bars and the widescreen letterbox bars. But the video was pretty sharp.

Next I tried it with the 480p and the fill screen option of my hdtv which is like 5% overscan or something like that. Not too bad but it is slightly stretched horizantlly that way.

I went back to 720p upconverted and it is not as sharp as other newer releases since this was a first gen dvd transfer. BUT I put in full overscan which is 25% overscan and actually was more tolerable to watch. Its presentation was similar to 1.85 widescreen movies on a 4:3 set - widescreen bars but only little ones at the top and bottom. Now I know parts are being zoomed off on the sides (in realtime not permanently of course). But this seems to be the best option for these 4:3 letterbox movies at the time.

I think what I'll do is just use the overscan on 720p mode for the best instant results. In the long run I'll wait for the hd-dvd releases of the movies. They already have the original season 1 of STAR TREK the original series out on hd-dvd combo dvd format. It won't be much longer before the 10 movies are re-released in hd-dvd. Perhaps that will be the best choice.

For now the overscan is the easiest option. Thanks for the suggestions everyone.